COTABATO CITY–Police have launched a manhunt against two men believed to be behind the attempted murder of yet another village official in Magpet town, North Cotabato on Monday.
Supt. Bernard Tayong, North Cotabato police spokesperson, said chairperson Emilio Buenavidez of Barangay Datu Celo, Magpet, was the second village official to have survived a murder attempt in the upland town in a span of seven days.
Buenavidez was onboard a motorbike driven by a certain Roel Reposo and was heading for home when ambushed by still unidentified gunmen in the border of Barangays Noah and Bagumbayan.
Tayong said Buenavidez, 59, had just attended the meeting and election of officers for the Association of Barangay Chairpersons in Poblacion Magpet when waylaid. Senior Insp. Jose Mari Molina, Magpet town police chief, said Buenavidez and Reposo both fell off the motorbike after the 12:45 p.m. shooting.
“The gunmen thought the village official was already dead and hurriedly left on a motorbike,” Molina said over a local radio station Tuesday.
He said responding motorists and residents rushed the wounded Buenavidez to the Antipas Medical Specialist Center, but the official had to be transferred to another hospital in Kidapawan City for security reasons. Reposo was unharmed.
On July 10, unidentified gunmen also ambushed and injured Magpet’s Barangay Sallab chairperson Ferdinand Cariaga while passing thru on a motorbike in adjacent Barangay Pangao-an.
Molina said the police are now pursuing a lead that may eventually identify the gunmen in both incidents.
He declined to further comment if communist New People’s Army (NPA) rebels were involved in the separate ambush attempts. Magpet is one of the towns in North Cotabato with high NPA presence. (Edwin Fernandez/PNA)